


Surrounded by Idiots

by Zharkhella



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Reptilia28's Don't Fear the Reaper Challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-18
Updated: 2019-09-18
Packaged: 2020-10-21 09:20:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20691146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zharkhella/pseuds/Zharkhella
Summary: Reptilia28's Don't Fear the Reaper Challenge.  It's an oldie, but a goodie.Harry dies and meets his personal Death.





	Surrounded by Idiots

**Author's Note:**

> **Boilerplate:**  
**Harry Potter** and the associated characters and fictional locations belong to J. K. Rowling, her assignees and heirs.  
If, by some stretch of the imagination, you believe I own anything of the intellectual properties of J. K. Rowling then the Janice Thickey Ward at St. Mungos has a bed with your name on it.

# Surrounded by Idiots

Harry stood there, and heard a high pitched voice say, “Avada—“ 

Then everything swirled about in a kaleidoscope of rainbow colors, before melding back into some semblance of normality. Only a semblance, because something was seriously wrong. 

Had he actually died from the killing curse? Why didn’t he remember the ‘Kedavra’ part of the incantation? Or had he been magically transported to some dungeon before the curse was completed? The walls all looked like the stone work in Hogwarts Castle. The dungeons, specifically. The hall was lit by torches placed in sconces at regular intervals. The air smelled damp and musty. There were no visible exits to the hallway. And the silence was suddenly broken by a booming shriek.

“Jeppersen! Get in here!”

A man in purple robes came running into the hallway through a doorway that hadn’t been there, and turned to face a door that had suddenly appeared in the wall. He was trembling as he opened the door and entered. Harry wondered what was going on and how the war was going. How was he going to kill Voldemort if he was trapped here, wherever here was. He stood up and tried to apparate back to Hogsmeade, but it didn’t work. He started searching for alternate doorways, as they all appeared to be secret doors.

“What was going through your head when you pulled Potter out early?!” Harry heard the voice continue shouting from the room behind the now present door.

The other person didn’t respond loud enough for Harry to hear. So it was like hearing only one side of a telephone call.

“Oh, you thought you’d save him the pain of dying since he’s experienced death so often?! It was the Killing Curse, you twit! It’s painless! Now look at the mess you made!”

“…”

“Oh, there was an anomaly in the time stream? Did you even bother to read the report I wrote? I get one lousy day off a year, and you muck it up!”

“…”

“Yes, we were aware that the meddlesome old fool created that anomaly. It was part of the plan you incandescent glow worm!”

“…”

“What do you mean there’s no harm in pulling him out early? Do you realize the damage you’ve done to his destiny, you blithering simpleton? He might have been able to pull it off this time! But thanks to your brilliant interference we won’t know, now will we? And because of you, I have another black mark on my record!”

“…”

“We have procedures for a reason, you cowardly invertebrate! To prevent disasters like this! You came highly recommended as a substitute for highly difficult cases! Had I known you’d pull him out early because you’ve done it before without repercussions I’d have asked for Jenkins down in Weather Control! He might be a plodder, but at least he’d have read the reports! Get out of my sight, Jeppersen, before I have you demoted to a heavenly pooper-scooper!” 

The man in the purple robe, which now looked shredded, ran out of the door and down the hall, crying. Harry stopped his pacing and stared after him.

“Potter! Get in here! I haven’t got eternity!” Boomed the voice from behind the door. 

Harry was startled out of his thoughts and walked to the door that had been left ajar. Harry was sure now that the voice was a very familiar female voice. There was a plaque on the wall that read ‘AGENT SMITH, Caseworker for Difficult to Near Impossible Cases’. He pushed the door open, stepped inside, and closed the door behind him.

Standing behind a formidable, dark, polished desk was a tall woman, who looked like Professor McGonagall, in a dark green robe. “Hello, Mister Potter. We meet again. Have a seat. Care for some tea and biscuits?”

“… Hello Agent Smith. Do I have time for tea and biscuits? I’m supposed to be fighting a war right now.”

“You have time. Reality is on hold until we get this snafu sorted out.” With a wave of her hand, a tray of tea and some biscuits appeared at the end of her desk. Harry helped himself, offered to pour some for Agent Smith, who accepted, and then seated himself.

“You said something about meeting again, but I don’t remember meeting you before.”

“Standard operating procedure. We don’t send the dead back with any memory of this place,” Smith said tersely.

“I see. How many times have I been here before?” he said after taking a sip of tea. Harry thought he should be freaking out, but was remarkably calm. Maybe there was a calming draught in the tea.

“Twenty-nine times, counting this visit, with three complete resets.” Smith ground her teeth. “Only eight of those incidents were not your fault and before you got to Hogwarts.”

“Is that why I’m so calm about this? I don’t remember any of this but it feels familiar.”

“Probably. Each case is different though. Someone else might be tearing at their hair in the same situation. In this case, the person tearing out their hair out is me.” Smith sipped her tea and angrily nibbled on a biscuit.

“You said something to Jeppersen,” Smith frowned at the name, “about me having a destiny?”

“Yes. The destiny. The part you cannot seem to fulfill before dying. To fight and defeat the Dark Wanker, live to a ripe old age of one hundred eighty-three, and marry your soul mate – some Granger girl – and have a bushel full of descendants.”

Harry sputtered tea. “S-soulmate? Hermione? Hermione Granger?”

“Is that the girl’s given name? Then yes, her.”

“But… Ginny…” Harry floundered.

“Have your flings. That’s none of my business. Might spice up the marriage. But do you think it’s healthy to marry someone just because they look like your mother?!” Smith took a deep breath and sat back in her chair. 

“Isn’t Hermione a bit too much like my mother? Brightest witch of her age? Teacher’s favorite? Prefect?”

“Doesn’t have a friend who becomes a Death Eater (and isn’t that a ridiculous title)? Doesn’t have a sibling who is jealous of her? Doesn’t have an intuitive knack for potions or charms, but rather a knack for general spell inventing? Isn’t friends with the majority of the school?”

“Right. So, I need to fulfill this destiny and I keep failing. And you’re going to keep sending me back until I get it right.”

“Wrong. Last time on the merry-go-round, Potter. You only get so many chances to do this right. That’s because otherwise we end up interfering too much with other destinies and stretching your continuity too thin. Destiny Control is breathing down my neck regarding this latest death. You were so close, and Jeppersen,” Smith growled, “had to screw it up while I’m taking my mandated break. Which ends up being my fault because I’m your Death Agent!”

“You… are my… death agent?”

“Capitalize it! It’s a title! And what did you expect?!”

“Uh… that you’d be wearing a black robe and look all skeletally?”

“Is that imagery still persistent? I don’t like looking emaciated, that’s why!”

“So, why do you look like my Transfiguration Professor?”

“Because as your Death Agent, I appear to you as the most authoritarian figure you know. I’m just thankful I didn’t end up looking like your Professor Snape. We’d never get anywhere with your animosity towards the man.”

“He was a petty dictator, not an authority figure,” said Harry.

Smith took another deep breath, and let it out slowly, then took another sip of tea. “So, back to how to deal with you. You are going to go back, and do it right this time or die trying! And if you do die trying, that’s it for you and me. We’ll both have had it.”

“How is any of this really my fault when I don’t remember the last twenty-eight deaths? How am I supposed to avoid the mistakes of my past if I don’t remember making them?” asked Harry.

“Ah, yes. How indeed. Well, I’ve gotten permission from the higher ups to allow you to go back to one of your pivotal moments with your memories intact.” She patted a stack of papers on her desk. It looked like there might be somewhere between two to three hundred pages in the stack. “You’ll need to sign this form in triplicate if you agree. Of course, if you don’t agree, the world gets screwed, and I lose my position as Death Agent.”

“Why would you send be back in time if I almost pulled it off this time?”

“We can’t send you back to that point in time because you got pulled out early. You’d have to have actually died for use to use that as a point to reinsert you. Do keep in mind that not all pivotal points in your life are where you died. In fact most of them aren’t, as we’ve done three complete resets.”

“What is a reset?”

“Where we send you back to point where you were born. That is rather nerve-wracking for us, as that is an additional eleven years where you could die before you even get to a point where you can take care of yourself.”

“I see. What would be the closest pivotal point to where I was pulled out early?”

“Let me see.” Agent Smith pulled out a file that looked quite thin, but apparently had more pages than it appeared to have. She flipped through the file for quite some time. “Ah. Here it is. The closest pivotal moment would be Dobby the house-elf’s death.”

“And when is the one farthest back in time you could use?”

She flipped through some more pages. “That would be the arrival of your first Hogwart’s letter. Now, there are advantages and drawbacks to each pivotal moment. The further back you go, the more things you can change. But the more things you change, the more unpredictable future events become. Particularly when you retain your knowledge of how things went previously. When you expect an event to occur and it doesn’t, or doesn’t occur as you expect it should, it can cause you issues with your reactions.

“Take, for example, Cedric Diggory. You could save him from dying during the third task of the Tri-Wizard Tournament. But what happens after that? Does he live to be a heroic figure, or does he become bitter and resentful and end up joining the Dark Wanker?”

“Cedric would never—“

“You don’t know that! You aren’t Cedric. You have no idea what will occur to him if he lives past the third task. For all you know, that is when he is fated to die.”

“What if he is fated to die then? I can’t change it, can I?”

“Oh, you can change it. But if you go into the situation trying to change it, that doesn’t mean it will turn out how you expect. He might die some other way at that moment in time. It might be even more tragic. You could be accused of his murder and sent to Azkaban. That’s what I mean about unpredictability. On the other hand, you might correct some errors in destiny by making those same changes. Perhaps by saving Cedric, Voldemort gets outed earlier to the British wizarding world.”

“Why couldn’t we look at how other destinies are supposed to turn out, and send me back with that knowledge?”

“What if that knowledge is that your Godfather has to die during your third year due to a dementor’s kiss? Would you be able to allow that to happen?”

“… No. I wouldn’t.”

“That’s why we have procedures to wipe your memories of everything that happens after your insertion point. You are in a most unusual situation because you got pulled out early. It creates all sorts of headaches when someone is pulled out early which is why we don’t do it. Jeppersen’s entire career will have to be gone over with a fine tooth comb to determine how badly he mucked things up by pulling other people out early. I’m surprised he wasn’t caught before now.” Agent Smith spoke conversationally, but she managed to break her teacup when setting it down, indicating how angry she was. She replaced it with a wave of her hand.

“So, do I decide the insertion point? Can we do any pre-planning or do I have to do that all by myself when I return?”

She leaned back in her chair and stared at the ceiling. After pursing her lips she sat back up and started looking through the contract. After a while she said, “Nothing in the contract says we can’t have a planning session before you return. Also there is nothing that says you can’t see the full details of your destiny, either. That will help us with the planning.” She rifled around in her desk drawers for a bit and then pulled out a red folder. She passed the folder to Harry. “Read that. It’s your destiny.”

The folder was marked ‘Top Secret’ across the cover. Harry opened the folder and read it. Three times.

“Not a lot of information here. Is there some way to destroy the pseudo-horcrux in me without Riddle firing a Killing Curse at me?” asked Harry.

“Aside from jabbing your scar with basilisk fang and then using phoenix tears to prevent you from dying? Not that I can think of. You could risk having someone else fire a Killing Curse at you, but based on your destiny, that has lower odds than having Mr. Fraidy Cat try to kill you. Prophecy and all that.”

“I hate that prophecy.”

“I know.” Smith said sympathetically.

They drank their tea in silence for a while.

“I suppose we should plan. If I can get rid of the horcruxes before the third task, I could kill Riddle in the graveyard after he’s resurrected. The question is, do I go back after the first one is destroyed, or earlier? If I come back after, people may notice a change in my behavior. With the rat’s prophesized escape, would there be any chance of proving my godfather innocent if he were trapped early? Or would that just send him off searching for Voldemort earlier?”

“Given the wording of the prophecy regarding Pettigrew, he will escape on that specific night and start his hunt for his master. So capturing him early shouldn’t be a problem. The real difficulty is the Headmaster.”

“How do you mean?”

Smith took a sip of her tea before answering. “He’s a manipulative old goat. Yes, he wants Moldyshorts dead, but he also doesn’t want you be free of the blood wards. Take first year. You needed to be in the castle during the holidays for you to find the Mirror of Erised. Second year, you needed to be in the school during the holidays to infiltrate the snake den. Third year, well, third year there wasn’t any driving reason for you to be in school during the holidays. Fourth year was the Yule Ball. 

“Additionally, he kept you in the dark about too much. He could have made sure you were combat trained, but he felt you needed a childhood. Not that you really had one. He sent Hagrid to get you for your first year shopping so you would see the vault emptied by Hagrid, and then he had Molly Weasley talk about muggles near the barrier so you’d be ingratiated to her for helping you onto the platform. If you would have had a proper teacher visit, you’d have known how to get onto the platform when you arrived. And he did his best to get you to be master of the Deathly Hallows, since he could not be their master. Just to name a few.”

After a few moments of thought, Harry asked, “Why couldn’t he be the master of the Hallows?”

“He could never master the cloak as long as you lived. Only a descendent of Ignotus Peverell could master it. It could not be mastered by theft, borrowing, or gifting outside the family, unless the line of Ignotus was extinct.”

“So, the ‘Master of Death’ is a real thing?”

“Yes, but not as you mean it. You would not be my, or any other Death Agent’s master. It would be like having the Philosopher’s Stone. You would die when you were ready to die, regardless of when you were fated to die. Your soul mate would have that ability as well. And you would be immune to the Killing Curse. Part of dying when you are ready.”

“I see. Well… Is Cedric fated to die on the night of the third task?”

“I don’t know. I’m not his Death Agent.”

“And Sirius?”

“I’m not his Death Agent, either.”

“Well, let’s plan for getting the rat captured, my godfather free during my first year, and killing the Dark Wanker, as you put it, on the night of the third task.”

“If you’re to keep your memories, we’ll need to buff up your occlumency. There is a procedure that we will use to separate your ‘old memories’ from any attempt to view them through legilimancy or having you spill them through veritaserum. Snape really was just an overgrown bully and didn’t try to teach you properly.”

Harry and Agent Smith spent hours planning and preparing, and making sure Harry had things memorized since he couldn’t take a list with him. Then it was time for him to leave.

  


+++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 

  


Somewhere in the bowels of a dungeon, in a room labeled ‘Soul Re-Insertion Department’, booming shrieks were heard echoing down the hallways.

“What do you mean you followed the procedures?! You imbecilic nitwits! You were supposed to follow the Sigma Nu Alpha Phi Upsilon procedures and leave his memories intact, not the Sigma Tau Delta procedures! Didn’t you lazy, thrice-damned, simpletons read the insertion paperwork?”

“…”

“No? No!? Do you not understand the magnitude of this screw up?”

“…”

“The fate of the entire world hangs in the balance and there are no further chances to fix it, you ungrateful, incompetent, cretins! Put reality on hold while I try and get the higher ups to give me permission to poke and prod my charge into surviving and completing his destiny! And remember, if the world goes down in flames, I go down. And if I go down, I’m taking you moronic nincompoops with me!”

  


+++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 

  


Harry eventually completed part of his destiny by killing Tom M. Riddle, self-stylized Dark Lord, but married the wrong witch. And because he didn’t fully complete his destiny, he didn’t live to a ripe old age of one hundred and eighty-three and have bushels full of descendants. As a result, Destiny Control had to rewrite some future destinies and assign them to less than perfect prospects.

Agent Smith kept her job, but was demoted for several decades. Jeppersen was reduced to cleaning out the stalls for the Apocalypse horses, and the two nitwits in Soul Re-Insertion were fired and re-incarnated as flobber worms.

  
  


### END


End file.
